


something like wind (and something like harry)

by yoshimiforestmagdalene



Category: Desire & Decorum (Visual Novel)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:41:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29801028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yoshimiforestmagdalene/pseuds/yoshimiforestmagdalene
Summary: Edmund cannot possibly be Edgewater's new heir when the rightful heir still scampers about the topmost landing, still plays pianoforte at the most inappropriate times of night, still drags with him the scent of sweet hay as he blows in through the front doors. A breeze, the other nobles call him: little more than a chill, or a taste of winter to come. But that is not it.He is Lord Harry of Edgewater, the rightful heir to the estate.
Relationships: Edmund Marlcaster & Harry Foredale





	something like wind (and something like harry)

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this a while ago. just vignettes of ghost!harry and edmund.

Edmund does not listen in to servants' gossip. For the most part, it is an instrument to entertain the mind during their mundane tasks of preparing the beds and dusting the furnaces and polishing the mantelpieces. It has always been about clandestine affairs and disputes within the family that said family do not realise have never been quite so private. The servants gossip just as much as Henrietta and the women do, and in the same manner, there is little in their whispers worth paying attention to. And anything that does so rarely happen to be worth paying attention to warrants a sharp slap on the wrist.

But the servants tell of different things now.

The servants tell of the pianoforte singing at night in the long-deserted west wing. They tell of barred doors flung open as if by an unseen force and of rushing wind that smells like sweet hay and manure and of portraits shuffled and switched and clattered to the ground like dominoes. They tell of gleeful laughter ringing through corridors like a juvenile tune and of shadows darting round corners before you can pinpoint their reality. They tell of the portrait of Viscount Harry of Edgewater and how his eyes cannot always be said to direct in the same place and nor can his face be said to remain in the same scowling expression as was cast in oil, because sometimes he smiles and other times he simpers but mostly he looks sad, forlorn, and his eyes glimmer like they are shining with tears. They tell of phantoms and ghosts and half-formed memories turned mysteries, and Edmund does try not to listen but not listening would be akin to not believing and—

They tell of nothing Edmund Marlcaster has not seen for himself.

* * *

Harry never cared too much for titles, neither his nor anybody else's, and he especially did not care for the Edgewater bloodline. It is what put distance between himself and the Dowager Countess, sometimes. He could be a spiteful boy. Perhaps it is why the portraits sit, sometimes, upside down, or why some mornings they are out of place, out of order, rearranged as if by an unseen hand.

One morning, it is just Edmund and a mousy-haired servant girl. She polishes each surface until it gleams and then polishes it once more; she disposes of the anemones though they are fresh and fills the vase with new water though the old was just as clear.

But does not touch the paintings.

The clock hums twelve. Henrietta descends the stairs in such a manner that it seems every step is a thunderhead, growling overhead. She regards the portraits with stained cheeks and she barks at the servant girl and she accuses her of tarnishing Edgewater's good name with her incompetence and she casts her out at once. 'It was Harry,' Edmund wants to say. But she already knows.

"Your mother grieves in her own way, Edmund."

Both women take their leave. Henrietta flounces past him. Edmund watches the paintings. He glances at the names. He knows them; not by heart, more by mind. Harry too. It is why pious Lord John is beside the rumoured polygamist Lord William V. (And they stashed William away, didn't they? Harry must have found him.) Cold breathes past Edmund's collar, something like too-close laughter. The windows are barred. The room is empty.

* * *

A portrait of Harry hangs above the staircase; it is a grand thing, cased in ornate cold, oil-painted and glorious. Company regard it curiously. "Such a shame," they say. "He was so young." They look Harry in his oil-eyes so easily; it is not a shame to them. It is opportune. They have another to throw their daughters at now.

Miss Sutton stares up at the portrait often, unabashed. She must have noticed Edmund's own aversion, because she makes gestures, sometimes, offhand comments, others, and delicate little coaxings, all too frequently — all in the silent name of persuasion.

"I'm sorry for your loss, Edmund." They are stood beneath it, because it has become much of a thing for nobles to congregate on staircases, now. Miss Sutton lingers too, though more out of her own obligation than social.

Harry hangs above them like a judge.

Miss Sutton peers across at Edmund, and her face is pulled into a dazed imitation of sympathy, and he cannot at all take her seriously. She is looking back up at the portrait, now, and though her eyes rove Harry, he knows her attention is on him. Another something that has become much of a thing is examining Edgewater's new heir: he has been probed at, verbally, and lashed at too.

He is too apathetic, they say; not enough of a backbone, they say; a poor successor, they say; a lying and conniving cheat, they say. Which is true? Nobody knows, but Miss Sutton wishes to be the first to procure an answer.

So Edmund issues a standard, "Thank you, Miss Sutton," and she is a little daft, so she does not make any attempt to conceal the shock on her face at his detachment. Apathetic, perhaps she will say, or maybe a lying and conniving cheat. He does not care. She blinks once, twice, and the conversation goes on.

Empty conversation is thick all around him; he's in the centre of a great copse of it. There is operatic music from the dining room and the incessant pounding of his own head above it all, but something else rises from above. A sweet and sorrowful tune, like a distant songbird. It is unmistakable.

Later that night, Miss Parsons stands beneath Harry, a glass of red wine tight in her fingers. Edmund is not close with her, but he does not mind her watching Harry like he minds others. He still cannot meet Harry's stare. Neither can she.

"Was it you, tonight? On the pianoforte, up in the west wing?" he asks, though he knows it was not. Though he had lingered by the stairs all night and not once had she passed to ascend. Though the tune played — Aita, Harry's favourite — has never known her hands.

"No." Miss Parsons swirls her glass. Edmund understands; it is not the first time the pianoforte has rang with song by unknown fingers. (Wind coughs against the windows; the scent of hay whispers past Edmund's nose.)

It will not be the last.

* * *

It is newly Spring, and Edmund and some others have orchestrated a hunt. It is grouse season; he tries very hard not to think about Harry. But as he enters the stable for his own horse, he finds Mr Harper attending to Harry's old stallion, Hermes, who has not seemed to settle since his boy stopped coming around. Hermes casts his head from side to side and treads restlessly in his small space. Harper is wrestling with fire, Edmund knows, and he is by no means winning. But after only a minute's blaze, Hermes inclines his head — suddenly meek — as if there were a hand reaching up to stroke his fine neck, offers his nose to these phantom fingers and sniffs appreciatively. Then, at last, he settles.

"How did you settle him?" Miss Sutton asks Mr. Harper later that evening. She has come by with her father to take supper with the family; she caught Harry just before he retired his own stallion.

"Aye, wasn't me who did it, Miss."

Miss Sutton turns back to Edmund, a twinkle in her eye. "Don't be so modest next time, Mr. Marlcaster."

He catches Harper's eye above her head. He nods. The familiar scent of hay and manure follows them all the way back to the house. After a week's worth of washes, it does not leave.

* * *

Autumn this year is damp and frozen and Harry spends most of it in London. He returns of an early October morning — so early, in fact, that the moon is still swelling high in the sky. He knows the servants will still be dozing. Yet as he pushes open the doors to the estate, he finds he is not the first to step inside this morning. Fresh footprints trail across the wood and up the carpet, wet and muddy and cut by a pattern Edmund is well-acquainted with. He follows this trail up two flights of stairs and finds himself in the West wing of the house, outside of a room long untouched.

The servants do not touch Harry's room.

Countess Henrietta has barred them from it. But even if she had not, they would never go in. It has a weight, that room, its own heaviness, she says. Like cold water in a bucket to be sloshed over you when you step in, except it is air. Cold, heavy air. It is why the Countess avoids the room berself; she has always been quick to chills. The Earl avoids it too, but his reasonings are far foreign to Edmund.

Edmund does not mind it, he finds, as he nudges open the door and slinks in. The heaviness feels like Harry. It leans against him, coils in what feels like thin tendrils across his shoulder, and it’s almost as though Harry has been waiting for him — waiting for someone, anyone, to visit him. It smells like Harry too, because although all the windows in the room are barred shut, the scent of sweet hay always clings to the heaviness, as it had clung to Harry all that time ago and as it clings to Edmund now.

He sits on Edmund’s bed; there is only one patch not consumed by dust, but he does not alight there. That is for Harry.

Later, Edmund is sitting for dinner. Countess Henrietta sniffs and scowls as he slides in beside her.

“Have you been with the horses again, Eddy?”


End file.
